Business-focused legal analysis and insight in the most significant jurisdictions worldwide

Basil Zirinis

Basil Zirinis has been a partner in Sullivan & Cromwell’s estates and personal group since 1994 and leads its international private client practice from London and New York. He represents individuals, fiduciaries and family-controlled businesses throughout the world in a broad range of matters, including estate and trust planning, family business governance and transition, estate and trust administration and litigation. Mr Zirinis has extensive experience in trust and estate litigation and has been involved in many of the leading litigations in this area in the past 25 years in the United States and abroad. He speaks regularly at international conferences regarding US and international tax and estate planning, including most recently in Shanghai, London, Lake Como, Bermuda, New York and Istanbul.

At a macro level, the dominant trend affecting the private wealth arena in the last 12 months continues to be the impact of various supranational initiatives seeking greater transparency with respect to anti-money laundering regimes and tax information exchange. I propose to focus in this year’s introduction on the central importance of the concept of ‘beneficial ownership’ and the theme of convergence in the increasingly interconnected arenas of anti-money laundering policy and tax information exchange.